Page 1 of Puck Block

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TAYTUM

My body arcis curved to perfection, and my toe points to the sky in the middle of my arabesque. The stretch is a breath of fresh air, and I inhale the moment I touch my foot back to the shiny stage, but it takes a moment to adjust to it.

There’s a groove in between my eyebrows with thoughts that send my heart into a bit of a tizzy.Calm down, Tay.

“Hey, you okay?” Claire’s face comes into sight. I don’t answer her right away because, truthfully, I’m not sure, but I know I don’t have to lie to my best friend and hide my concern.

“Yeah, I think. I just got a little dizzy.”

She holds her water bottle out for me, and I take it with a shaky hand. I tip my head back and swallow a few gulps before handing it back and nodding. “I’m fine. Maybe grab my snack kit just in case.”

She hands me my little pink bag with llamas wearing sunglasses all over it. “Should I call Emory?”

I scoff. “Absolutely not.”

I know my brother means well, but he, along with my parents, tend to forget that I’m twenty-two and have, on occasion, taken care of myself.

“Tay, are you sure? We don’t want a repeat of the incident at The Bex. Where is your glucose monitor? We should check your levels.”

I glance at Claire with her hands on her hips and her bottom lip tucked underneath her teeth. She’s the shyer one of our bestie duo, but the burn of embarrassment was much more potent to me than it was to her that night.

Nothing like the entire restaurant spinning when your feet are firmly planted on the ground and then, to make matters that much richer, your face meeting the unmoving floor moments later and taking your friend down with you.

That was the start of everyone learning that I have type 1 diabetes, and ever since I was diagnosed before coming back to Bexley U in the fall, I’ve been riding waves of ups and downs.

I take a deep breath, and the room settles. “I’m fine. Really.”See? Totally fine.

Coming to Bexley U, even with my brother and Ford in attendance, was a breath of fresh air for me. For the first time, I was able to break away from being Emory’s little sister and go off on my own. They still tried to step in and interfere whenever our paths crossed, but it wasn’t nearly as demoralizing as when we were in high school.

But this year, I’m back to being in my own version of hell.

After I was rushed to the ER during our yearly summer lake trip, nearly died, and was later diagnosed with type 1, things fell into the same cycle as before.

The phone calls from my parents are borderline obsessive. If I don’t answer, they dial Emory next. If he doesn’t answer, they move to Ford because they know he will stop anything to take their call.

“As long as you’re sure,” Claire says.

I nod to her and unzip my bag. I stare at the contents inside.Candy, glucose tablets, peanut butter crackers.After I sort through everything, I zip it back up. I feel fine physically, but there’s a nagging voice in the back of my head that’s making me hesitate.

Professor Petit claps her hands twice, and I push my bag off to the side. Claire and I stand and make our way over to center stage to run through the end-of-year performance again. Dance isn’t my one true love like it is for a lot of the dancers in the program, but it’s all I’ve ever known. With Emory and Ford having an all-consuming passion for hockey that dictated their lives from elementary school and on, I decided at a young age that I wanted something like that too. It turned out to be ballet, and here I am, at Bexley U on a scholarship.

“That was a great arabesque, Taytum!” I smile at one of the younger dancers when she finds her position on the stage.

“Yeah, except for the landing. Why don’t you go practice instead of trying to make friends with the more established dancers?” Heat burns my neck at the sound of Kate’s piercing voice when she reams into the freshman. “And as for you”—she turns to me, and I want to flick her pointy little nose—“we wouldn’t want your face to meet the floor again, so maybe you should go practice too.”

I bare my teeth. “Shut the fu–”

Claire’s face pops into view. Her eyes are wide, and when her hands land on my shoulders, she hisses under her breath, “Taytum!”

“What?” I shrug. “She doesn’t get to talk to me or the other girls like that. This isn’t an audition forMean Girls.”

Kate rolls her eyes and turns around in a huff.

I may have some areas of insecurity, but that doesn’t make me passive by any means.

“She needs a dose of reality,” I grumble.

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